In Mumbai, ‘train friends’ and their tantrums

Shiv Kumar in Mumbai

Unlike other Indian cities where people bond at playgrounds, clubs and social dos, Mumbai has a special class of ‘train friends’ – commuters who by virtue of travelling in the same railway compartment every day grow close and become friends.

‘Train friends’ have their favourite seats, their own corners near the doors of trains to hang out from, and days in a month when they sing bhajans, play cards, and in case of women commuters, sample each other’s cooking. Commuters who are not part of these groups usually stay away from ‘train friends’ and respect their space or ‘right’ to a particular corner of a coach.

Usually groups of ‘train friends’ ‘adjust’ intrusions by interlopers but often packed railway compartments during rush hour leads to heated arguments. This is when ‘train friends’ transform into train bullies who punch and beat up anyone challenging them.

Last November, a 26-year-old woman, Prabha Prabhudeva, was thrashed by three fellow women commuters for standing in ‘their’ place. In her police complaint, Prabha alleged that she had boarded a crowded train plying between Virar in the distant suburbs and Churchgate in downtown Mumbai. As she stood near the entrance, the three women who usually occupied the space argued with Prabha and then bit and scratched her, the police complaint said.

The Government Railway Police said the four women were detained after they alighted at Bhayandar railway station and began quarrelling on the platform. After questioning, the police filed charges against Azida Bibi (30), Tanuja Bibi (38) and Mashuda (36) for assaulting Prabha.

“Incidents of violence are common in trains during peak hours as the trains are crowded,” says Niket Kaushik, Commissioner, Government Railway Police. Most incidents go unreported as people are in a hurry to get to work or home.

Railway officials say bullying in Mumbai’s local trains are becoming a bigger problem by the day. “We are cracking down on commuters who close the doors from inside in order to prevent others from entering,” says an official of the Western Railway. However passenger associations blame the railways for not augmenting services.

“The number of people living in distant suburbs is increasing, but not the number of trains,” says Dipak Gandhi, who heads the Western Railway Passengers’ Association. Gandhi had in the past suggested tweaking railway time-tables to improve the frequency of trains.

Railway officials say the infrastructure catering to Mumbai’s commuters is overburdened and has reached breaking point. “There are so many trains running every three minutes. We hardly get time to carry out maintenance work during the day,” says a Central Railway official.

Canceling just one train during peak hours results in the pressure being passed on to subsequent trains. Angry commuters often protest cancellation by squatting on train tracks or damaging railway property. “We get abused in our office for reaching to work late and our salaries are cut only because the railways are not able to run trains on time,” a commuter arrested for stoning trains recently told reporters. The disruption at Diva railway station on the Central Railway forced the authorities to tweak the railway time-tables on that section to provide some relief to commuters.

Train passengers say, the soaring cost of real estate in Mumbai has forced people to live further away from the city though they have to travel long distances for work. Mumbaikars living in townships as far as Dahanu in the western suburbs and Panvel on the central line commute more than four hours each day, adding to frayed nerves.